Issue #87

February 2nd, 2014

Articles & Tutorials

Link Bild Understanding How Your App Uses RAM (android-developers.blogspot.com)

Android 4.4 KitKat introduced a new system service called procstats that helps you better understand how your app is using the RAM resources on a device. Procstats makes it possible to see how your app is behaving over time — including how long it runs in the background and how much memory it uses during that time.

 

Android internals: ART in practice - Part 3 (blog.dominik-helleberg.de)
A further look into the new ART runtime and what effects it may have on development.

Monads: Your App as a Function (mttkay.github.io)
Matthias Käppler believes functional programming (FP) will be just as important to mobile application development in the future as it is for web development today. The reason is quite simple: it’s easier to write resilient code in functional languages, and resilience is key.

Nested Fragments and the Back Stack (curioustechizen.blogspot.com)
Kiran Rao writes about the back stack of fragment transactions maintained by the FragmentManager and how they relate to nested fragments.

Simpler Android apps with Flow and Mortar (corner.squareup.com)
Square has released a pair of open source libraries as an alternative to Fragments and FragmentManager called Flow and Mortar. This article introduces the key concepts in using the libraries.

Building Animations with the android.transition Framework (blog.bignerdranch.com)
Over the years, Android has gradually improved the animation tools available to developers. Property animations introduced in Honeycomb provide a fantastic API for creating rich and complex animations. In KitKat, android.transition builds on top of that and makes it possible to define animations in a more declarative manner.

How to make gradient buttons in Android (androidtuts.net)
Nima shares a tutorial on how to create gradient buttons using XML drawables.

Sponsored

Link Bild Join the Space App Camp 2014: Apply now (www.app-camp.eu)

Innovative developers from Europe wanted! Take the chance to spend one week at the European Space Agency (ESA) in the Netherlands, work with like-minded people, and learn how to enrich your mobile applications with satellite data. Apply before 3 March.

 
Link Bild Your App, Dolby Technology (developer.dolby.com)

Download the Dolby Audio API to create an impressive sound experience in your app or game. The API is easy to integrate, 100% free, and the impact is immediate. The result: Optimized audio with more natural, balanced sound. Download today!

 

Design

Link Bild Android Design Corner: Beautiful Solutions (www.androidauthority.com)

Craig Tuttle, currently studying Computing Technology: Human Factors at Colorado State University, will be taking a walk through design concepts with several articles on Android Authority.

 

Jobs

Freelance w/Companies like Airbnb, IDEO & Life360, Anywhere (www.toptal.com)
Work on special projects with great companies through Toptal. Set your weekly/hourly rate, and work from anywhere in the world as an Elite Android Developer. Apply today!

Libraries & Code

Podax Podcast player (github.com)
Podax is a podcast downloader and player. It is heavily modeled after Google Listen, which is no longer in development. So if you want to see how a large open source app is developed then check it out.

Conceal (facebook.github.io)
Conceal provides a set of easy to use APIs for performing fast encryption and authentication of data. Apps can use Conceal to encrypt data and large files stored in public locations, for example SD cards.

Dart Extras Injection Library (f2prateek.com)
Prateek Srivastava has create an extras injection library inspired by ButterKnife's View injection design. Simply use annotations to define extras and make one method call for it to work.

Tools

Gradle Tips and Tricks (tools.android.com)
The Google team for the new Gradle-based build system have started sharing some tips and tricks on a new wiki page.

Gist: Asset resizing script for Macs (gist.github.com)
Here's a simple shell script for Macs that will resize and copy all images in a directory to mdpi, hdpi, xhdpi, and xxhdpi directories.

DPI Calculator (chrome.google.com)
Allows users to easily convert a dpi value from one density to another from a convenient Chrome browser extension. Type in one field and the others will calculate and fill in automatically.